Tomorrow’s Friday Nooner guest is DeShawn Brown, the Co-Founder and CEO of Raleigh-based Coworks, which we first profiled more than four years ago and much more recently became the first investment made by Colopy Ventures sister company Primordial. You can watch live at noon on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, or catch afterward on those same platforms or in its podcast form. Programming note: this will be the last Friday Nooner before our annual summer hiatus; we’ll return on Friday, Sept. 1.
Music Makers
Adam Canosa was a public school music teacher when the pandemic hit, suddenly making it impossible for his students to make music together in person. So he taught himself coding and developed an online music instruction platform that has evolved into Hillsborough-based edtech Algorhythmic Labs. The startup recently earned a $10K MICRO grant from NC IDEA.
Raleigh-based SongVest, which we first profiled in 2020, is giving music fans the opportunity to “own” a piece of three songs by TLC, the best-selling girls group in U.S. history. TLC has re-released the songs “No Scrubs,” “Creep” and “Diggin’ on You.” Fractionalized shares of the songs—which allow owners a percentage of the royalties—will be made available for bidding on the SongVest platform. See here for all the info.
While I am definitely a fan of the first two songs, I am keeping my powder dry for TLC's “Waterfalls.” It was the song of the summer of 1995, which I spent sorta getting a tan while living in a summer house in Avalon, N.J., on the Jersey Shore. Kindly keep your “I was only [x] years old in 1995!” or “I wasn’t even born yet!” comments to yourself, thank you.
Breaking Through
Morrisville-based startup Whomi announced today that it has been selected as the “Career Development Solution of the Year” in the fifth annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards. Whomi’s self-guided career development platform enables universities and colleges to provide lifetime career support to all of their alumni at scale. The platform is already being used by universities like Notre Dame and Texas A&M. See more info here.
Car Talk
I don’t typically come across stories in Auto Remarketing, which bills itself as “The News Media of the Pre-Owned Industry.” But Auto Remarketing broke the news that Texas-based DAS Technology has acquired Chapel Hill-based 3 Birds, which provides SaaS-based marketing, analytics and consumer engagement solutions to car dealers and others in the automotive industry.
3 Birds co-founders Kristen Judd and Len Wohadlo are joining DAS Technology’s executive leadership team and are bringing along more team members. Read the full story here, and also feel free to send us your best “killing 3 Birds with one stone” joke.
Novel Approach
GrepBeat boldface nameRobbie Hardy is releasing her second book next week, a fictional business fable titled “Fed Up to Start Up.” Her book follows the main character, Rebecca, as she goes from a disillusioned manager in the corporate world to a startup founder. The Launch Place and its CEO Eva Doss will be hosting a book launch event for Robbie next Tuesday, June 13, at First Flight Venture Center in RTP.
Robbie tells WRAL TechWire that she especially wrote the book for women CEOs, a world she knows from experience. I’ll be at the launch event to get my signed copy, which I pledge not to flip on eBay for big bucks.
New CEO
Morrisville-based Jaggaer—the procurement software firm previously called SciQuest—has named Andy Hovancik as its new CEO. That comes three months after the abrupt and still largely unexplained departure of its previous CEO, Jim Bureau. See TBJ for more info.
Next Tech Awards
Business North Carolina and NC TECH have collaborated to create the Next Tech Award to recognize the state’s rising stars in tech and tech-enabled companies. The committee picked 10 winners each in three categories: tech and innovation, tech professional, and sales and marketing. See the list of honorees here, and fuller bios—with lots of fun pics!—here.
Back To School
I’m starting to wonder if the local tech media keeps covering the moves of former SAS exec Oliver Schabenberger because it’s fun to to say (and type) “Schabenberger.” Regardless, both TechWire and TBJ report that Oliver is returning to his academic roots as a faculty member at Virginia Tech. Oliver was widely expected to be the heir apparent to Jim Goodnight at SAS before he left in late 2020, perhaps because Jim has never actually stepped back to allow an heir to succeed him.
Build Great Software
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dualboot is a software and business development company. Their clients include tech and non-tech founders as well as Fortune 500 companies, so they can start small or scale fast depending on what you need. Every client is assigned a U.S.-based Product Director with years of experience bringing products to market, and they can manage the entire development process. They focus on how the software fits into your company to drive revenue and build the business. At Dualboot, they don’t just write your software—they help you grow your business. Intrigued? Email them here.
Extra Bit
The new Raleigh chapter of Founder Institute, the world’s largest accelerator program, is hosting its first event next Tuesday, June 13, at 6 p.m. It will be a virtual roundtable on what investors are looking for in funding startups featuring Tobi Walter (Cofounders Capital), Lister Delgado (IDEA Fund Partners) and Fawzi Itani (Forerunner). You can find more info and register here.
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